Five women enter the space ready to perform. They are circus performers. But they aren’t just going to do dainty, pretty tricks with big smiles. They’re going to tell us about the risks they take and the sexism they encounter as they try to do the work they trained so hard to do.
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Cuba Libres in hand, we are invited to pull up a deck chair and enjoy our own private beaches. Two friendly hosts promise us a relaxing, all-inclusive stay at Guantanamo Bay Resort – but given the name of our destination, this tropical holiday is rather different from the norm.
To celebrate their tenth year of creating superb physical theatre, Theatre Ad Infinitum bring two of their early works back to the Fringe. Their one-man Odyssey, touring since 2009, and the 2011 non-speaking Translunar Paradise aren’t a return to form – because the company doesn’t have one. They pride themselves on not replicating style from one piece to the next, so every show is a unique blend of physical theatre and innovative storytelling.
These two productions, whilst with less prominent design elements than their more recent work, are just as different from each other as they are the other shows in the company’s repertoire. But similarly, they are phenomenal examples of physical theatre and storytelling structures.
When they were kids, Alice promised Sam that when they were grown, they would still hang out and play superheroes. Now they’re uni students home for the summer, and have both changed a lot since that promise. But Alice turns up in Sam’s back garden to make good.
1987. Hull. Two couples in the same hospital each have a child. Leah is born to a working class family, and Chris into a middle class one. As they grow up, their lives are shaped by world events, social class and their parents’ income and ambition.
Neither leads a particularly notable life, but it’s their millenial everyman-ness that Luke Barnes celebrates. Middle Child sets their first thirty years to a rock anthem soundtrack with a David Bowie-esque narrator, elevating the everyday to the extraordinary in a guitar-fuelled, sweaty, cathartic gig of a show.
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After growing up on Disney films, Chris’ aim in life is singular and simple: to live happily ever after. He thinks he achieves it when he meets Ryan as a newly qualified Drama teacher in Cambridge. For five happy years, the pair live a life akin to a fairytale. But as Chris discovers, not all fairytales end happily.
By guest critic Michaela Clement-Hayes
Rule number one: We do not ask questions about Project Mayhem.
Rule number two: We do not ask questions about Project Mayhem.
And of course, we do not talk about Project Mayhem, which makes it fairly tricky to review Secret Theatre Project. I mean I don’t want them to kill me, or my loved ones. And anyway I’m 100% committed to the cause…unlike most of the audience who stood around like gormless children getting embarrassed if anyone spoke to them.
By guest critic Nastazja Somers
Andrew Maddock, the writer behind the hugely successful IN/OUT (a feeling) has a great talent for creating fully developed and multi-layered characters that don’t come from privileged backgrounds. Not often enough do we see stories of working class people explored beyond the mundane on stage. Directed by Niall Phillips, OLYMPILADS, Maddock’s new play is set in Wembley during the 2012 Olympics. It examines the lives of three siblings, all of whom dream about running away from their fears.
We all know the world is fucked. But who can we blame? In Ontroerend Goed’s £¥€$ (LIES), they blame the global banking system.
More of an interactive gaming event than a performance, LIES splits the audience into six groups of seven. Each group sits around a semi-circular wooden gaming table helmed by a performer-cum-games master. Each table is a nation, and each person is a bank in that nation. To grow our nations’ economies, we must grow out banks.
by guest critic Gregory Forrest
The bed is the first thing we see. The mess is the second. By the end of the evening, we see just how messy one bed can get. Written and directed by Vicky Jones, winner of the 2013 Verity Bargate Award and co-artistic director of DryWrite, Touch is an acerbic slice of contemporary womanhood, romance, and urban isolation.
The Play's The Thing UK 